Wednesday

Mar 7, 2018 at 1:31 PM

At their height in the mid-’60s, the British pop duo Peter & Gordon – Peter Asher and Gordon Waller – had a slew of Top 20 hits, including “A World Without Love,” “I Go to Pieces,” and “Lady Godiva.” At precisely the same time, the British pop duo Chad & Jeremy – Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde – were riding the charts with “Yesterday’s Gone,” “A Summer Song,” and a cover of “Willow Weep for Me.”

By the end of that amazing musical decade, both duos had called it quits, as far as working together, and headed off to new interests, with Waller and Clyde pursuing acting careers, Stuart getting into musical direction in American television, and Asher becoming an A-list record producer, with both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt in his small stable of acts.

In later years, both Peter & Gordon and Chad & Jeremy would reunite as part of Oldies tours, but only appeared together once during that time, in Asher’s words – “to demonstrate once and for all, that there actually were two different duos.” After Waller died in 2009, Asher would play out from time to time, accompanied on a couple of songs by a video of Waller singing.

Chad & Jeremy were still performing up through last year, until Stuart opted for retirement. Now, between producing projects, Asher – who just worked on an upcoming Netflix special with Steve Martin and Martin Short – is hooking up with Clyde for a limited tour of “Peter and Jeremy!,” which makes a stop at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on March 15.

Asher, 73 (Clyde is 76), spoke by phone from their rehearsal space in New York.

“I occasionally do three different shows these days,” said Asher, referring to his solo act “A Musical Memoir of the ’60s and Beyond,” his teaming up with R&B and country guitarist Albert Lee, and these brand news gigs with Clyde.

“Jeremy and I came up with the idea to do shows together in conversation,” he explained. “We’re friends, anyway, so it made sense to try it out, and we started putting some ideas together. We pretty much split the set lists. So, we’ll get to combine the hits, theirs and ours. Then we’ll tell stories that circle the same subject, and sometimes different subjects. We’ll also do some Everly Brothers songs.”

But even though Asher has irregularly written new material, there won’t be any of that this time around.

“No, not in this show,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a new song that would definitely fit. We are doing some songs that we haven’t done before, but no new ones.”

There will also be a nice sense of intimacy to the shows, as there’s no band involved.

“It’s just the two of us and Jeff Alan Ross, my keyboard player and musical director,” he said. “We’re doing an acoustic show with just him.”

Asher comes out of the skiffle band era in England. He played piano very early on, “but I was very bad at it, as I didn’t practice, and I eventually got a guitar.” After playing in various acoustic skiffle groups, he met Gordon Waller, they matched up well on harmonies, and they were discovered performing in London’s Pickwick Club, then signed to EMI Records.

At their first recording session, performing Paul McCartney’s “A World Without Love,” Asher picked up on what the producer, Norman Newell, was doing in the studio, and liked what he saw. This later led to a producing position at the fledgling Apple Records, where he also kept an eye out for new talent and, after a move to the States, a long career producing and managing Taylor and Ronstadt.

Asked if he watches today’s music competition shows on TV, he said yes, sometimes. Asked if he thinks any of the artists he’s worked with in the past would break through on those shows, he didn’t even pause.

“I think Linda would have,” he said. “It would be difficult because she doesn’t dance or do anything other than just sing brilliantly. But I think her singing is so exceptional, that if she stood up and sang a song she’d win any competition going on that particular day.”

On a different, but definitely musical-related topic, and since he was one of the three founders of London’s Indica Gallery, where John Lennon met Yoko Ono, he was asked who was responsible for giving her that first show.

“It was John Dunbar, my partner there,” said Asher. “He was the art part of the trio of myself, him, and Barry Miles. It was us going to her. John had read about her and I think he got in touch with her and her then-husband Tony Cox, and found her very interesting. Maybe John had read a review of a previous exhibition. I don’t know. But it definitely led to a change in musical history.”

Peter Asher and Jeremy Clyde perform “Peter and Jeremy!” at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on March 15 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $33-$53. Info: 781-646-4849.